About this project

$5,473

pledged of $5,000 goal

129

backers

"Kathe
makes intensely private work that lets the world walk around in it . . .
it’s oddly heavy and comic and deliberately perverse . . . She puts her
words and her body on the line more than any other contemporary artist I know." - Eileen Myles

**LOTS OF ADDITIONAL REWARDS ~ CHECK UPDATES!!!!**

Writing a book has one major expense to be funded, and that is TIME. This campaign is to fund two months+ of uninterrupted time to bring a major project to completion. It will cover living expenses and the ability to tuck everything away for this duration, so I can empty my head of absolutely everything but the book (details below). Just so we are clear! No hidden agendas! It is a lot to ask for I know, but the main budgetary item in completing a novel is TIME and this is what I need.

UNTETHERED
is my first novel. I have been working on several memoirs over the last 5 years and have published excerpts in various periodicals, journals, anthologies, magazines. I am finally close to completing what looks like, approximately, a 350 page fictionalized memoir. I have reached a
critical point the story that requires all of my attention and
concentration in an non-fragmented state of mind. Many major sources of
funding for writing (that I apply for & continue to apply for) are set up to fund
exactly this kind of work. This is the support I am asking for from you. It's kind of old-fashioned. No technology, no bells & whistles, no movie stars . . well, maybe a few movie stars.

The book is a mesmerizing, and often hilarious, epic tale of Vera Bruna, single mother of 3 beautiful strong-willed daughters (the movie stars) and
performance artist, and, at least in her mind, infamous
lover/seductress. It follows her journey through single motherhood, family tragedy,
substance issues, the international art world, obsessive relationships, tantric love, raw foods,
and indigenous rights of passage.

At the center of the book is Vera's True Love Project, a conceptual performance work in which she promises
to "fall in love with the world one person at a time, for one day, one
hour, one afternoon, concentrating on live love and also commuting
telepathically throughout the world." What begins as a gossip worthy international art
scandal turns into a spiritual practice, her life direction irrevocably altered.

Fed up with the art world & "accidentally" introduced, through a notorious ex-lover, to an exotic tribal sub-culture
of indigenous shamans and all night prayer circles, right in her
own backyard in upstate New York, she finds
herself at the center of a secret coterie of prayer, magic,
ancestral tradition and celestial beings. With adventures on both the
physical and astral plane, she gains a deeper understanding of her own matriarchal lineage, her role as sage and mother and finally finds herself in the end, finally understanding the true meaning of love.

There is nothing in the book that has not happened in my life. The work is fictionalized to protect sacred realms and intimacies that deserve this respect.

"It is hard, all that we do to grow and I can’t even imagine how hard it
is to die. I have nothing to compare it to but my continually broken
heart. I do know that it is so hard to be born, to start that long,
sorry trip from the bliss of darkness
into the lights of the world. It is also horribly difficult to pull our
wobbly bodies across the vast terrains of a floor, even harder to take
the immense sky of our minds and make it fit into tiny little
configurations of sounds so that people can understand us.

We
don’t have a choice. We don’t choose love either. It has the same mack
truck impetus of survival behind it, the urgency of the exit ramp of
puberty and the dark forest that it leaves us in, no road through, no
road out. We remember something that we can’t place, the echo of such a
long time ago, something we are sure we will recognize when we get
there. Everybody, so brave."

"The thought of Kathe loving me all day (through The True Love
Project) was unexpectedly touching, and an idea I found myself stroking
from time to time like an amulet, because it made me feel special, lucky
. . Such strong devotion made me feel small like a kid, cause this is
the way God and Santa loves, invisible and always." - Michelle Tea

FAQ

The $$ is to fund a deeper process for me. I have been a single mom & working artist for what seems like forever, I also work as a healer & have worked for many years with kids/teenagers, using creative writing as a therapeutic process. I have been writing for years on this project in between all of this. The book, Untethered, is currently in the state (much like transition in the birth process) where I can't hold it easily in such broken increments of time. A friend has offered me her home for 6 weeks & I will use funds to be able to focus without the concern over living expenses & my other financial responsibilities. I feel I can complete the book in this amount of time.

As I said in the video, writing a novel takes such a huge, huge amount of time, if you were to make a "budget" for it, it would probably be well over $100,000 just for the years of work, if you were add up the hours. Writing does not have as many physical expenses, quantifiable expenses, as many other mediums/projects other than time & the ability to live.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $250 or more
About $250

All the promises of love heretofore, with a collector's copy of a signed limited edition artist's book (pre-publication), complete with exclusive photos & handwritten notes, along with the silkscreened & embroidered T-shirt

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,500 or more
About $1,500

You can have it all, every last morsel of love, AND a gourmet raw meal for 6 prepared in your home with absolute devotion by The Love Artist with tarot readings for everyone!! (if you're far away . . . you have to bring me . . . stay in touch though, I am always on the move . . ) ONLY ONE BOOK PER PLEDGE